A petition being submitted to the FCC to update rules acting as barriers to competition and broadband investment will be discussed by USTelecom and CenturyLink officials at a media call Monday, said a news release from the groups Friday. Scheduled to be involved are Steve Davis, USTelecom board chairman and CenturyLink executive vice president-public policy and government affairs, and USTelecom CEO Walter McCormick.

Securus must give Pay-Tel Communications an unredacted copy of its inmate calling cost study by Monday, after the FCC Wireline Bureau denied Securus’s request for confidential treatment. Securus had said releasing the documents would cause it “irreparable harm,” said the Wednesday order (http://fcc.us/1sOWzxe) in docket 12-375, but the bureau said Pay-Tel’s outside counsel, who requested the records, is not involved in competitive decision-making. The bureau granted another Securus request that the documents not be made routinely available for public inspection.

A secure Web portal (http://bit.ly/1uDYhS0) was activated Wednesday by the FCC Wireline Bureau for the electronic filing of special access information and certifications, a bureau public notice said (http://bit.ly/1xFY8ik). The information is due Dec. 15.

Education and library groups battled in E-rate modernization replies filed at Tuesday’s deadline over increasing funding for the program. The FCC “continues to lack sufficient baseline data to determine the ‘high-capacity connectivity'” needed to make decisions on future E-rate funding, so it’s “premature” for the commission to consider increasing funding, said the American Cable Association (http://bit.ly/1pGbkL3), echoing comments telcos made earlier (CD Sept 18 p11). More data would only back up the need for more funding, emailed American Association of School Administrators (AASA) Associate Executive Director Noelle Ellerson. Arguing the FCC isn’t able to increase funding without more data is “short-sighted, ill-willed, and certain to not only undermine the long-term success and sustainability of the E-rate program but to also threaten the continued persistence of the connectivity gap if not further exacerbate it,” Ellerson said. “In a time when almost every single classroom and the majority of libraries in the nation have lower speed internet access than the average American home while serving multiple times more users per day, it is time to ensure that our libraries and schools are connected with the quality of connectivity that is sufficient and scalable for today’s ever-growing connectivity needs,” said a joint letter from more than 30 companies and groups, including AASA and the National Education Association. The commission should ensure there’s sufficient funding for low-income schools and libraries to have adequate broadband and Wi-Fi connections, said minority groups including the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, the NAACP and the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (http://bit.ly/1rGyuoB). But an increase shouldn’t hit consumers or pull money from other USF programs like Lifeline, and distinctions should be removed between funding broadband connections to schools and libraries, and Wi-Fi within the facilities, the groups said. Echoing Chairman Tom Wheeler’s call for closing the connectivity gap facing rural schools and libraries, the American Library Association (ALA) said (http://bit.ly/1E0H4VL) “over half of all libraries report speeds of 10 Mbps or less -- for rural libraries this increases to about 70 percent.” ALA also called for more funding.

Two of three LECs have reduced congestion at interconnection points they have with Level 3 since March, but it’s hardly a promising sign for an open Internet, said Level 3 Vice President-Content and Media Mark Taylor in a blog post Tuesday (http://bit.ly/YNYQea). Congestion for the two LECs, which he did not name, improved only because they “forced Netflix to pay to interconnect directly with them,” the post said. Netflix signed the deal “because they had no choice: all third-party content that LEC broadband users want to see eventually has to go through LEC interconnection points. When the LEC tries to turn these interconnection points into Internet tollbooths there is no alternate path for the content to take to reach the consumers,” said Taylor. Broadband providers are offering “'Not’ Neutrality: a competitive distortion made possible by the monopoly control they have over access to their customers,” he said. “These broadband providers are willing to degrade the performance of the service they sell to their customers to extract arbitrary access charges, discriminate against third-party Internet content and harm competition."

Windstream said it has begun the second phase expansion of its 100 Gbps long-haul express network. Phase two will expand the network by 4,100 route miles by the end of the year, Windstream said Monday. The expansion will include routes between: Chicago and Omaha; Kansas City, Missouri, and St. Louis; Cleveland and Albany; Boston, New York and Philadelphia; Atlanta, Charlotte and Ashburn, Virginia; and Memphis to Monroe, Louisiana. The first phase of the project covered 5,300 route miles, Windstream said (http://bit.ly/1wVjftF).

The deadline for submitting Form 477 broadband deployment data was extended because of “significant and unanticipated” technical issues in the FCC’s filing system on Sept. 26, the Wireline Bureau said in a public notice in Tuesday’s Daily Digest (http://bit.ly/1ovVALd). The deadline had been Oct. 1. The bureau said it will announce the new filing deadline when the problems are resolved.

The bidding process to select a new Local Number Portability Administrator (LNPA) fails to include requirements “recognized as crucial to national security,” said a Neustar-commissioned report by a consulting firm headed by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. The report, which a Neustar spokeswoman said the company plans to file with the FCC this week, is part of the company’s bid to hang on to the LNPA contract after the North American Numbering Council (NANC) recommended it go to Telcordia. Neustar “is obviously highly familiar with the Chertoff Group, given that both are so focused on national security issues,” but the report is the first time the company has contracted with the consultant, said the Neustar spokeswoman. The contract called for Chertoff to do a “written analysis of the national security implications of the LNPA proceeding,” she said. Telcordia responded that the Chertoff Group report is “the latest desperate stunt from Neustar in an attempt to use fear to hold on to its multibillion[-dollar] contract.” The report was also called “fear-mongering,” in a separate statement to us by former Public Safety Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett, now with Venable and representing Telcordia. The report largely tracks Neustar’s filings (CD Aug 22 p4) questioning the adequacy of Telcordia’s bid in terms of preserving national security. The Chertoff Group questioned Telcordia’s response that any concerns about its ability to deal with law enforcement or national security issues can be worked out during contract negotiations after the FCC confirms the selection (CD Aug 26 p4). “The defects cited in this report cannot be remedied simply by post-award contract negotiation,” the Chertoff Group wrote. Alternatives include rebidding the contract or reopening negotiations to impose additional security requirements, the report said. If number portability administration centers (NPAC) operated by the LNPA “were compromised, telephone calls and text messages might not be completed, many search warrants and subpoenas might not be served correctly, and our system for prioritizing communications in a national emergency might not function,” the report said. The bid terms were “insufficient in both scope and specificity when compared with widely accepted national and international standards,” the report said. It said there isn’t a requirement “for a complete risk assessment and risk management program to discover and monitor risk to the NPACs, while tracking and prioritizing its mitigation.” The analysis is “critical to maintaining a secure system” to keep security from becoming “obsolete in the face of constantly morphing threats,” the report said. “There is no merit” to the report’s claims, Telcordia’s statement said. “What is really at risk is the tens of millions of dollars per month that delaying the award of the new contract will cost carriers and ultimately consumers.” Telcordia said it’s in discussions with law enforcement agencies “to ensure that these agencies can continue to receive the information they need with the necessary security protocols in place.” Barnett said that “regardless of whom Neustar pays to implement its scare tactics and spread misinformation, Telcordia will build its number portability system from the ground up as an American system, just as secure as the other critical U.S. systems that Telcordia operates and protects now."

It could take until mid-October for the FCC to finish posting online all net neutrality comments filed before the Sept. 15 NPRM replies deadline, meaning it will have taken a month to post them all, an FCC spokeswoman told us. The agency posted comments in docket 14-28 on Thursday that were filed at the deadline 10 days earlier. Normally, converting comments into a PDF file and then having them reviewed by the Office of the Secretary takes a couple of hours, the spokeswoman said. “However, the conversion process does not scale to handle the 3.7 million comments received in this proceeding.” Comments in other proceedings are processed along with net neutrality filings, so there could be slight delay in posting, the spokeswoman said.

After finding that about half of the roughly 180,000 Connect America Fund, Phase II challenges filed with the FCC were without merit, the Wireline Bureau in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1BhCtul) Friday sought comments on the remaining tens of thousands of challenges over whether Census blocks should be eligible for Connect America Fund, Phase II funds. Responses to the challenges are due in docket 10-90 by Nov. 10. Of the 42,520 challenges that Census blocks deemed unserved by a broadband provider should really be considered served and not be eligible for funding, the bureau said only 24,225 of them made a prima facie case for further consideration, according to FCC figures. Of 135,815 challenges saying an area considered served should be considered unserved and eligible for funds, the bureau found 70,868 met a prima facie standard, the figures said. The challenges were seen as a high-stakes battle in which companies were trying to protect their own turf from competitors, or to be able to tap into the $9 billion pot to move into other areas (CD Aug 21 p2).